In her essay on the Sun in The Luminaries, Liz Greene contrasts the Sun’s role in our lives with the Moon’s. While the Moon describes our body, our earthly, temporal existence, the Sun describes our spirit. The Sun represents the impulse within us to grow, to aspire, to reach beyond our boundaries and become someone greater in each moment than we were the moment before. We are never “done” becoming our Sun, and the quest we follow leaves behind our legacy. The Sun, Greene tells us, is not concerned with the world around us, but with that destination we are headed towards, always over the next horizon.
When we best express our solar selves, we are unique, shining, confident – and vulnerable to the envy of others who fear their own light. There is a temptation to hide our true gifts and abilities, and to go along with the crowd. But the price for this withdrawal is a spiritual death. Greene equates this failing to a hero’s refusal to answer the call to adventure – a call that we hear many times throughout our lives, with the world depending on each of us to contribute our gifts when asked. In becoming the best we can be as an individual, we build the richness and progress of our world.
The chart of Queen Elizabeth II can teach us about the Sun as symbol of the hero’s journey. Born fresh and new in the fixed springtime sign of Taurus, it tells us that Elizabeth will be called to build something stable, lasting, and valuable to her community. The Leo Moon in the eighth house describes her earthly fate – a princess who inherited a throne. But her Taurus Sun in the fifth house converts the entitled nature of this gift into a project, something she must create from the uniqueness of her own personality and experience.
While viewers of The Crown understand the actual conversations and expressions are fictional, the description of events in Elizabeth’s life is based on fact. We can see in the series Elizabeth’s challenge to take on the role of Queen when she was a young and untried wife and mother, expected to be a regal and steadying force in the tumult of post-war England. In order to maintain a crown relevant to the people of her kingdom, Elizabeth would be called upon to become a more public figure, learn to communicate through media, adapt to the changing mores of the 60’s and 70’s, support a revolving door of prime ministers, raise children who would need her guidance through a multitude of crises, face economic uncertainty and the louder questioning of the relevance of the crown, and be forced to let down her invulnerable guard to publicly mourn the death of her former daughter-in-law, Princess Diana. Queen Elizabeth II would come to be admired for her tireless devotion to maintaining the dignity and importance of the crown, and she left behind a legacy of sterling public service and devotion. She built what was promised in her chart; she answered the hero’s call.
It is so lovely that the nature of this fifth house Taurus Sun was also fulfilled in Elizabeth’s private life. In the house that promises joy and the pleasures we take in life, Elizabeth reveled in her life as a countrywoman. She loved her horses, dogs, gardens, and opportunities to escape into nature. She also in this Venus-ruled sign would enjoy a long, loving partnership with her husband, Prince Phillip, and there was little doubt that they loved each other until the end. And she bore four healthy children. While from our perspective, her experience as a parent was complicated, to say the least, part of Elizabeth’s call to adventure would be bringing children into the world to carry on her legacy.
Liz Greene also tells us that we can look to planets aspecting the Sun as “helpers” on our hero’s journey. It is interesting that Elizabeth’s Sun is largely unaspected, having moved past its trine and sextile to her Neptune opposite Mars and Jupiter, and past its square to her Ascendant-Descendant line. It also conjoined Chiron two days before her birth, suggesting some of the wounding in her childhood, as her uncle abdicated the throne, leaving her father to reluctantly assume the duties of the crown. The nature of this solitary Sun suggests that Elizabeth, alone, would need to accept the role and face the challenges which were her fate.
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